20 Spy Movies You Must See Before You Die

The Lives of Others is a low-key addition to the spy film genre. There aren't any elaborate gadgets or block-wide explosions - instead, this is a quiet, mediative and ultimately sad look at a troubled individual.

The film, which took home the Oscar for Best Foreign film in 2007, bears comparison to Francis Ford Coppola's other surveillance masterpiece, The Conversation. Large portions of the film are dedicated to Weisler (Ulrich Mühe) as he eavesdrops on a couple in 1980s East Berlin and later comes to question his occupation.

The more we listen, the more we feel like we're part of the ordeal, of course, sat right there next to Weisler with our own set of headphones. We feel complicit in his actions, but - like the protagonist - we are compelled to go on.

The atmosphere of this film is appropriately bleak and one could certainly argue that the sense of time and place the director creates is the film's most accomplished feature. The sense of paranoia that hovers over every frame allows us to feel as though we, too, are being subjected to the same oppressions as the characters.

The Lives of Others is a spy film, then, albeit one that denies any aspects of glamour associated with the genre and presents us, instead, with a cold, hard portrait of a highly disturbing time and place in history.